


How to know when you're a wo-wo-e

by Keenir



Category: Last Resort (TV)
Genre: Ficlet, Gen, Languages and Linguistics, conlanguage
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-03-01
Updated: 2013-03-01
Packaged: 2017-12-03 23:09:45
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 426
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/703714
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Keenir/pseuds/Keenir
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Sometimes there really is a word for someone like him.</p>
            </blockquote>





	How to know when you're a wo-wo-e

**Author's Note:**

> This ficlet, like [Frowimhe shuuvii si-vith ava saachim](http://archiveofourown.org/works/583605), uses a word which is written in Arimaspean Creole - one contact language which may or may not have arisen on Sainte Marina.
> 
> (WARNING: as of this writing, I still haven't seen the last three aired episodes)

Marcus came across them walking on the beach. "Fra Weya, fra...Tumrenjack," Marcus said, dredging up the girl's name, having not used it much.

She nodded.

Fra Weya - who could justifiably call Marcus a youngster, certainly by comparison - she said, "Thank you for meeting me today, Captain. Particularly in light of how busy you have been of late."

"Still am," Marcus said. _The ambient level of busy and watchful we've all had to be since the start of our stay here._ "Still, I agreed to this," only in part to prevent another misunderstanding between my crew and everyone, making this island untenable as a refuge. They would meet to go over essentials of Island language and culture - the highlights which were needed, but hadn't found their way into the CIA Factbook. Sometimes they were accompanied by Tani, sometimes by another Islander.

A single nod. "Then I'll restrict today's to a single concept. One which I feel fits you well already."

"Is that so?"

"It is so. _Wo-wo-e_ is the word." _No doubt if our words were monosyllabic, or if we didn't distinguish prefixes from suffixes, then we might have appointed tones._

Marcus waited patiently, curious to see how this word described him, and his body language communicated that fact.

"It was formed from - no, you haven't yet learned 'longer duration guests' - _wo_ was a word we learned from the missionaries and governors of years past, meaning the location of someone or something. The one in front of it came from _wŏ_ , meaning I, myself, but came to include simply any individual." _The -e arose during the Pidgin period of what became our modern language, to distinguish them before the order-within-a-word was settled, and final E was always pronounced the same way by both the Kaiser's men and our pre-Kaiser ancestors: èh._

"I am here?" Marcus inferred.

"That, yes. Also, it can be the place where you are. Poets use it to give emphasis to the personal space of someone important."

"My father used it to refer to people who were immovable objects," Tani said. _Such as myself in his opinion._

Marcus smiled. "Thank you. Wo-wo-e," he repeated the enunciation.

"Yes," Weya said. "It can stand on its own, or be a part of a sentance. The person always goes at the start, the location at the end. But our post-Independence writing system leaves much to be desired - behold," and with her cane, she wrote in the sand five ways of writing the same thing...

**wowo-è**  
 **wówo-è**  
 **wówo-e**  
 **wówò**  
 **wowo**

"And that, Captain Marcus Chapman, is you."


End file.
